


Day Three - Chava, and those who came after

by anotherusedpage



Series: Sunrise, sunset [3]
Category: Fiddler on the Roof
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:22:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherusedpage/pseuds/anotherusedpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows her daughters for a blessing</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Three - Chava, and those who came after

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).



> Three drabbles. Art is hand drawn in brush-and-ink.

A son would have been a tragedy.

It is disloyalty to think it, but she knows it for the truth.

A son of hers would be a son of Israel, whatever else he was. His father's good Christian blood forever tainted by the Jewish stain on her soul, and his.

Nobody forgets.

It does not take a mohel to make a boy a Jew.

She knows her heart would have broken to deny a child of her blood and body his Covenent with the Lord.

Like her mother before her, she brings forth daughters. She knows it for a blessing.

*

Fyedka's daughters, raised Christian, will turn to her, one day, and know her for a stranger.

The little signs. The spiced honey cakes that no other mama cooks. The way she stumbles, still, over the words of the mass, which every other good woman knows as if she was born to it, by heart, learned the way of the illiterate.

She will explain to them, when they are old enough to know. She is no coward. Their heritage is their burden, and their right.

Fyedka's daughters – her daughters – will turn to her, one day, and wonder if they know themselves.

 

*

They will blame her, one day, for their dislocated faith and half-hidden history.

She sees them in church, wreathed in incense, candleflame reflected in their bright eyes. They do not read Hebrew. They do not know the old ways; cannot speak the prayers; have never kept Kosher.

She tells them stories. Safe stories. Bible stories. Good Christian tales of pious women and righteous men, willing them to understand, _ your stories, our stories, too_.

She gifts them as best as she can the half-heritage of a half-abandoned faith. She prays that they will learn to read themselves between the lines.


End file.
